Sequester-Sized Government Waste Can Go First

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel complained today about $8.5 million in cuts for classroom teachers in Wisconsin if the sequester goes through. The Fort Worth Star Telegram was more worthy, saying that the $67.8 million Texas will lose in education funding is doable for the state.

“That's a lot of money,” says Star-Telegram.com, “but the state is scheduled to receive $4.9 billion in federal funds this year, part of a total school spending plan that tops $40 billion when local funds are included. What the White House is talking about is taking away less than a 10th of a percent of public education spending in Texas. It's doable.”

Both positions in Milwaukee and Houston are understandable. But both are also off the mark.

Because the question that’s most salient here isn’t the monies that are at stake now, but the monies that have been wasted before- and will be wasted again if we don’t demand cuts now. Monies that won't go to teachers and firefighters and cops and soldiers. Money that will reward those who've created the monster.

With government spending expected to cost $6.3 trillion in the US for 2013, let’s look at the things that we’ve squandered money on thus far; waste that has gone a long way to getting us where we are.

After all, sequester demands that we only cut $44 billion in federal spending. That’s a sum that more or less we’ve wasted on a ton of high profile boondoggles that seem to spark little outrage by the administration that can’t stand the idea of cutting even waste.

But will a $44 billion cut in spending out of a $3.8 trillion budget, a mere 1%, really be a "meat cleaver approach" that will "eviscerate" government programs?

Obama frightens people by pretending that the $1 trillion cut takes place right away rather than being spread out over 10 years.

He has taken almost every possible position on spending and taxes. During the 2008 presidential campaign, Obama continually promised to "cut net spending" and make government smaller. The stimulus was promised not to "raise projected deficits beyond a short horizon of a year or at most two."